Through these interconnected poems, the main character, Ruby, the refugee of a massacre, shelters in the woods where she befriends an Irish trapper. The poems convey how fear of discovery is overcome by the need for human contact which, in a tense unraveling of events, is forcibly challenged by an Aboriginal lawman. The natural world is richly observed and Ruby's courtship is measured by the turning of the seasons. [From the publisher's website]